Leandra Medine's Blog, page 728

Dispatch from Monaco: Louis Vuitton, Resort 2015

You can tell a lot about a designer from the way he takes his post-show bow.

Consider Karl Lagerfeld, who is known to walk his entire runway slower than his models traipse through the course of the characteristically lengthy spectacles. In watching the fresh facial expressions of his oft-sizey audience, the prodigious designer boasts an indelible confidence that assumes their reactions will match his own impression. Or so one is led to think.

Now look at someone like Hedi Slimane, who, for the past two seasons at the helm of Saint Laurent, hasn’t even so much as peeked out from behind backstage to acknowledge the critics, the clients, the fans and so forth who have come to see what he’s done. Maybe he’d just rather not.

But then there is Nicolas Ghesquière, who emits with equal parts humility and self-respect, the perfect run-toward-center-stage-and-wave. With a smile plastered across his face that appears so genuine you begin to wonder what’s more authentic: the LV monograms or the man, he lifts his arm then turns back around to return from where he emerged.

You come, you clap, you appreciate that he’s back in the same way you might your best friend returning from a faraway trip, and get the sense that he’s personally thanking you. I guess that’s exactly it — the intimacy factor. Through his clothes, Mr. Ghesquière has this uncharted ability to make you feel like you’re as close a friend as his pack of cool girls, which de facto include Gaia Repossi and Charlotte Gainsbourg.

Of course, you’re not, but that doesn’t detract from the experience.

On Saturday night, Mr. Ghesquière unveiled his second collection for Louis Vuitton in the first ever resort show for the the storied house. A theme that’s been running strong through the season is in the heretofore presented collections’ lengthiness. Just last week, Lagerfeld showed an 83-look resort collection while previous to that, Raf Simons unveiled 66 looks for Dior. This week’s 300-person show took place adjacent to the royal home of the Prince and Princess of Monaco, both of which were in attendance, and presented a dynamic 46 looks that ran a garb-gamut from Monte Carlo appropriate to the more realistic, less resort leather and shearling.

The venue was enclosed by four walls of floor-to-ceiling windows, which allowed for inquiring eyes to peek in until the show was to start and large curtains emerged to exclude the general public’s viewing. Prior to the show, guests were offered Vuitton-branded post-cards complete with pixelated images of oceanic views that were mimicked across the space’s ground. When the models came out, they appeared to be walking on water. The a-line skirts of fall were present in some places, suggesting the vaguely jovial, absolutely youthful and yet determinedly elegant direction Ghesquière is taking for Vuitton, while the high waist skinny pants and 70s-style floral prints that have become emblematic of his own ethos had their moments, too.

There were also shyly flared pants in colors like pink and yellow as well as jumpsuits. A consistent print that looked like psychedelic reefs appeared in varying grades of burnt yellow, orange, blue and green, complimenting the cylinders-as-polka dots and additional stripes and cubes.

There was one-off-the-shoulder blouse which for me was, in spite of the tinsel waist-belts and python ruffles and trunks-as-minaudieres, the most salient reference to the expansive dexterity of Ghesquière .

Who else would think to have a classic, familiar silhouette appear so fresh and novel in reverse? Sometimes, it seems, you just need a friend to show you how to see things differently.

Images courtesy of Louis Vuitton, cruise collection images shot by Juergen Teller

The Man Repeller 2014 Commencement Speech

Mary Schmich famously told the class of ’97 to wear sunscreen. David Foster Wallace, in 2005, reminded the graduating class at Kenyon College that “this is water.” George Saunders shared his regrets last year with Syracuse University in a commencement speech that underscored kindness and in 2014, Amelia and myself have this to say:

Go rogue.

To the graduating class of 2014, may we just say we can’t believe it’s 2014. We thought we’d have exploded by now, just like everyone predicted. It’s a wonder that we haven’t. But this also comes to show that contrary to predictions and that which makes them predictable, you can’t predict the future. But you can dict the pre.

We bet that whoever gave your actual graduation speech said that some of you are about to become doctors, or lawyers or business executives/weed dealers. But the truth is that if you’re reading Man Repeller you’re going to go on to become so much more: a painter who can’t actually paint, an athlete who hates exercise, or a writer whose vocabulary spans only five words. Conversely, you might become a plant even though you’re human, a carnivore even though you’re a vegetarian, or a juggler who’s afraid of balls.

Graduation speeches have historically suggested that you go above and beyond your limits. That you see yourself as better than you currently are. That you try to make yourself a more extreme and valuable version of the person you’ve spent your parent’s life savings becoming. That graduating college connotes the beginning of a new chapter, a wider future, a new life.

But frankly speaking, nothing changes.

As it shouldn’t.

Instead of coming home and ignoring your homework, you’ll go to your office and ignore e-mails.

You may be compelled to get a job — don’t. Street performing is more fun.

Or you may be compelled to take a gap year for travel to find yourself…which is fine, but if you’d just look in the mirror you’d see you’ve been found.

Remember, wherever you go, there you are. Literally. So stop looking.

We know you won’t technically be in college anymore, but hang around the campus anyway. Marvel in the glory days of yonder. Put the Super in Super Senior, and be that really creepy older person at freshman parties. The kind who makes people say, “Hey, you don’t go here anymore. Stop drinking our beer.”

Then remind them that they’re underage and you’re 35, so technically, you’re confiscating the beer.

Eat with your mouth full. Flip people off. Pinch butts in elevator.

Steal candy from babies.

Steal candy from grandmas.

Steal candy from candy shops and then throw it up on the carpet like a cat.

If you don’t have anything nice to say, say it. Then tweet it, screen shot-it, Instagram it at the person you’re referring to and then, like your own post.

Shave the hair off your best friend’s head while she’s sleeping.

Shave the eyebrows off your man friend while he’s sleeping.

Gather the hair from both of those people and then lacquer it to the floor of your enemy’s bathtub.

Go vintage shopping and loudly shout, “It smells old in here.”

Dick around.

Literally.

Imagine what dicking around would “literally” look like.

Then try it.

In public.

Seize the day. Don’t wear sunscreen. That shit makes you greasy. Get a tan, get freckles, get wrinkles. Forget regret. Sing Rent loudly. Do worry about kindness, but if a fish asks you what water is, stare at him blankly.

Then eat him.

And through a mouthful of salmon, claim YOLO.

When someone hands you a card that says, “I hope you dance,” look at the giver square in the face and growl, “I won’t.” And someone will give you that card, you know. That and the book about all those rhyming places you’ll go.

The fact of the matter is, though, you’re not going anywhere.

Except rogue.

How to Tell if You’re Turnt Up or Turned Down

When Kanye West first used “turnt” in a sentence I made it my business to understand the word. I was later introduced to the concept of “turning up,” which I grasped rather quickly because I’m a fast learner.

Then along came the business of turning down. This, I assumed, was a synonym for being turnt up. Apparently it’s not.

And I wasn’t the only one in the dark.

My confusion stemmed from DJ Snake & Lil Jon’s electronic anthem, “Turn Down for What.” The song is one of the catchiest, jazziest, and most annoying tracks of recent months. It’s hyper and fast-paced. It’s like the “Harlem Shake” on sizzurp. It makes me dance like a drunk baby at an EDM concert, so if “turnt” means crunk and “turnt up” equals wild, then isn’t “turning down” just the same thing in a new dress?

No. But to my credit, even Lil’ Jon seemed confused. (Hi, he didn’t even know what he was turning down for.)

So in the name of education, investigative journalism and weekend parties on the horizon, I did my research and came up with a guide.

How to Tell if You’re Turnt, Turnt Up or Turned Down:

Turnt was first added to the Urban Dictionary on August 2, 2005 by Erica Peters. It’s her only entry, and seeing as the first time I heard the word was in February via a Kanye West remix, I’m going to go ahead and assume “Erica Peters” is Kanye West’s screen name.

According to Kanye/Erica, Turnt means:

“Horny, Drunk, f*cked up!! Crunk!!

Damn, I am all turnt on! or I am getting Turnt to night at the club!”

Turnt Up is similar. User KayBee{LD} — who must be some sort of pilgrim from the year 1621 due to her repeated use of the use of the word “thee” — defined Turnt Up as:

“- Thee act of getting drunk and high to thee highest degree 

- Getting loose {whether that be just being wild or engaging in sexual activity}

- Shanay got supper turnt up at thee party last night.”

So if you’re still with me we can acknowledge that turnt and turnt up are essentially the same thing. Both mean you’re partying excessively hard.

Turn Down is, according to Urban Dictionary, what “irritated” people say to those who claim they are “turned up.” It means “to not get rowdy, remain calm.” Used in a sentence, the slang-site provides this: “Man, turn down already and stfu.”

And here’s where I had my moment of clarity: Lil’ Jon must have been turnt way, way up. Super up. And someone, perhaps his neighbor, asked him to “turn down.” His response: a proper rebuttal in the form of feigned ignorance. “Turn down for what,” he asked defiantly. “Turn down for what?”

So being turned down is the opposite of being turnt up. Confusion only happens because the word turn double-dips! If you have trouble remembering this, focus instead on the preposition that follows:

Up = hyper. Down = calm.

Still with me?

The woman in the photo above, for example, is turned down. (However, judging by her party attire and sparkly decor, it’s possible she had been turned up, and is now reaching descent.)

Let’s pause for a quiz:

Are you smiling? (Yes) (No)

Are you drinking? (Yes) (No)

Are you grinding on something? (Yes) (No)

Have you broken any house plants? (Yes) (No)

Are you loudly shouting and wooing and flailing your arms like a maniac? (Yes) (No)

Are you refusing to sit down quietly and think about what you’ve done? (Yes) (No)

Are you starting fights? (Yes) (No)

Are you braiding a stranger’s hair? (Yes) (No)

If you said mostly yes: Congratulations! You’re turnt and turnt up. They are the same thing, remember!

If you said mostly no: That’s okay! You’re turned down. Maybe it’s nap time. Going home is probably the better move, just don’t try and drag Lil’ Jon down with you. It only makes him turn up higher.

And if your answers were somewhere in between…

I’ll let you make the call. You’ve got the official guide at your fingertips, after all.

How to Cuff Your Sleeves

Not to sound like a poorly recorded infomercial but do you find yourself time and again purchasing button down shirts because you like how they look (for the most part) and love how they make you feel but find that the sleeves are almost always just…too dangnab long?

Ugh! Me too! And it only gets worse when you’re buying men’s shirts, which I typically am. The sleeves are longer and wider. And roll as I might, sometimes the perfect J. Crew-cuff is either too difficult to perfect or too ideal to actually remain intact through the course of my wear.

Which is where the why-didn’t-I-think-of-that solution of all solutions comes in to reveal itself as the unsung hero of exposed wrists. You’ve got a cuff, right? How about two? Are they malleable?

Good.

Take them off your wrists and open them wide like they are your mouth and you are at the dentist for a teeth cleaning. Now, using your opposite hand, lift your sleeve to above your elbow (or wherever feels most natural) and slide the cuff into the ruche. Adjust the size of the cuff accordingly until your sleeve is holding itself up like a six-month old baby does its own head.

Repeat process on opposite arm and high five yourself for cracking the code on a) personal style that is actually personal and b) using your cuffs alternatively.

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Denim shirt by Shipley and Halmos, MiH jeans, Charlotte Ronson eyeglasses, Stuart Weitzman sandals, cuff from Asos.

It’s Kind of a Funny Story: Christopher Peters and Shane Gabier, Creatures of the Wind

Shane Gabier: I think we should talk about the moment on the train.

Man Repeller: Is that how you met?

Christopher Peters: Well it’s not how we met, but that’s when we kind of decided we were going to be like, I don’t know…that was a weird experience.

SG: Well Chris was – at the time that we first met, I mean, I guess we’d known each other for –

CP: He didn’t even know who I was!

(Laughs)

SG: No, a couple years later I looked at…one of Chris’s old student photo IDs, and he changed so much and I was like, “Wait, you were that guy?” You’d changed a lot in a couple of years.

MR: You guys went to school together?

SG: I was a professor The School of the Art Institute in Chicago and Chris was a student, and I was dating somebody else at the time, and we just kind of broke up, and Chris was maybe moving to London, and at that time, I mean, he’s ten years younger than me, he was just a kid, I wasn’t really thinking about it, you know what I mean?

I was teaching in fashion design, and Chris was a junior, but graduating.  And…did my birthday happen first? Yeah, my birthday happened first.

CP: I think your birthday happened after.  So I’d gone to school to clean out my locker and get all my stuff because I was leaving.  I was moving to London to transfer to school there, and I –

SG: Oh yeah, so it was that night on the train. So I was downtown for some reason…

CP: You were there for Björk!

SG: Oh yeah, I went to see Björk! I was getting on the subway to go home and I got on the car and I looked to my right, and there was this dude that I’d been seeing around the neighborhood who I was into, and he kind of looked up and smiled at me, we said hi a few times, and then I looked to the other side and Chris was down at the other end of the car, and I was like, “hmmm,” and I went left and talked to Chris.  That was a couple days before my birthday party.

CP: And so, I don’t know why I decided to do this because I was moving, but I thought, “Oh, I really think Shane’s cute, and I want to date Shane, I guess!”

MR: Just from that instance on the train?

SG: No, we’d known each other from the department a little bit, and he’d come over to my studio and helped me on a project earlier that spring, just for a couple of hours. And we had a lot of mutual friends.

CP: So I decided I wanted to date Shane, and I found out that his birthday party was coming up, so I called one of his best friends and was like, “Let’s hang out tomorrow night!” and she was like, “Oh, I’m going to Shane’s birthday!” and I was like, “Oh man, I really want to hang with you.”  She said, “Oh, you can totally come to the party!”  And I was like, “Can I?”  And she goes, “Yeah, that would be cool!”  So I got myself invited to his birthday party and I brought a really nice present, which was this still life photograph of Victorian England –

SG: London.

CP: London, yeah, and then one of his friends was there at the dinner, who was this super-cute dude, and he was kind of flirting with me during dinner.  Shane wasn’t really paying attention to me at all, and I was like, “I don’t know if he likes me like that, whatever,” and the guy asks me, “Do you need a ride home?” and I go, “Sure.”  So I got a ride home, we pull up to the front of my house, and he says, “Do you have roommates?” and I remember thinking at that moment, I really have to make a decision right now! This cute other dude, or Shane? So I said, it’s Shane, and I jumped out of the car and said, “I have roommates, everyone’s here, I gotta go bye!”

And that guy called Shane a couple of days later and asked him if it’d be OK if he asked me out, and Shane said no.

SG: He called and asked me if he could get Chris’s number, and I was like, “I don’t think you guys would be a really good match.”  And then we had our first date the next week.

He came over –

CP: Oh!

SG: He’d just bought –

CP: I’d just bought the Jodorowsky –

SG: The Jodorowsky –

CP: Kind of like…

SG: His three movies.

CP: It was El Topo, The Holy Mountain and…something else.  They’re like these super-psychedelic, super-violent movies.  So we watched The Holy Mountain. That was our first date!

SG: He kind of moved in right away.

CP: And we’ve been together now for seven years….we’re always together, which is the other crazy part.

MR: When did you launch the business?

SG: Later that same year we started making stuff, because there’s a studio in my house, so we started just working on things, but at the time we weren’t really working towards anything specifically…

CP: The next February we decided we were going to take a bunch of stuff to LA.

SG: There were a couple of stores out there that we were interested in our stuff. We met a few editors. We met Kim Friday from Women’s Wear Daily at a party and one of our friends was wearing something we’d made, she asked about it, and she took our contact information.

CP: And then a couple of months later, we had the cover of WWD!  But we didn’t even have a collection.

SG: No stores, just a rack of stuff we’d made. And they put it on the cover of WWD. That kind of started the ball rolling.

CP: And then we got a feature in W Magazine.

SG: We both knew we wanted to make clothes and it was really fun for us to work together, too.

CP: I don’t think we could’ve been any more naïve. We were like hillbillies making clothes! Like, “We’re going to sell a little fashion line!”

MR: That naiveté is so important.

CP: With fashion, it’s so difficult to get places. Knowing what it takes to get there, it’s just impossible. If you knew everything that would have to happen, it would be soul-crushing.  It’s better not to know and kind of like, believe in miracles and just –

SG: Just figure it out.

MR: Do you think that being creative together helped your relationship?

SG: Yeah, for sure, and…after a couple of years, it worried me a little bit, like, “Can we sustain our relationship, working together like this?” You hear stories of couples working together in fashion and ending really disastrously. I mean, we talked about it a lot, but at a certain point too, we both realized that we grew up in households where our parents worked together.  My parents had a business together, and so did Chris’s, so maybe that helps.

CP: One of the big things we’ve realized is that we can’t be separated from each other, and not in the way like, “We just love each other so much!” If we break the hive-mind, and this is more in the work realm, if we start reasserting our own separate aesthetics again, that’s when we start to fight.

SG: Like if I go away for a week, which doesn’t really happen that often, and we’re both sketching and working on things, we sort of drift apart a little bit, and when we both look at what we’ve done, it’s not the right thing anymore.

CP: That’s really the only time we fight, is when we’re apart.

SG: The only thing we fight about is work, the collection. We’ll fight about pantone colors or different weights of leather –

CP: Or pockets and buttons!  “I only want two buttons!”  “No, you need more buttons!”

SG: Really important stuff. But we always work it out too, and I think it’s probably really good for the collection and really good for us because it forces you to make more of an informed choice. Everything has to be…worked out, that makes us more efficient.

CP: But it also forced us to be very considerate. We have to talk like we’re constantly in therapy: “I understand why you’re saying this thing to me, but I’m responding to this in this way, because I feel this and this and this and this.”

I think that in the larger scheme of things, it’s helped us to be better at communicating.  We’re actually not that great at communicating a lot of the time, because a lot of people think we’re very confusing and wordy, but I think that, in terms of how we work, we’ve been able to really maintain a healthy working and personal relationship.

MR: Do you ever shut work off for personal time?

CP: The only time we don’t talk about work is when there’s a fight happening, I think the last one was about sequins or something, and that was a big one, where it was like, “We’re just not going to talk about sequin stuff!  We can talk about other stuff, just not sequins, because we’re not going to fight about this over dinner!”

SG: I think nothing really goes into work past a certain point unless we both feel good about it, you know? Usually if we can’t agree on something, we just kind of kill it and move on to something else.

MR: You guys are probably each other’s best editors in that regard, because you still understand each other’s viewpoints, and then you’re probably able to understand that it’s both your child, and that it can be detached.

CP: It’s weirdly our kid.

SG: I like bright color a lot more than Chris does.

CP: Yeah, I’m not into super-bright.

SG: So usually I have to look at those kinds of colors and ease him into them. But, I always want a couple colors, like a couple just really searing, totally off-colors in the collection.

CP: Yes. I mean, that mint green wool skirt from fall, that was definitely your baby, that skirt, both versions, the pink and the green. And then that color, I think we decided…I don’t know how that color went into that skirt.

SG: We first put it in a couple of sweaters.

CP: We first put it into a couple of sweaters, but then how did we decide to do it with the green?

SG: We had the fabric, we had that wool.

CP: Our merchandiser had come in a couple weeks beforehand, and I mean, she’s not a big color person, she killed it in a lot of places. And then we ended up running that skirt on a bunch of color wheels, so that’s how that skirt came into being. But I remember when we were like, “This collection is so understandable!  Nobody’s going to freak out about anything!”

SG: That’s where the idea of naiveté comes in.

CP: That collection felt like, for me…our first real collection. And I don’t mean to diminish any of the other collections beforehand, but – it was the first time where we actually made the collection, we actually plotted it out, and had a team and an office and people to work with, as opposed to, “This is cool!  Let’s make it!”

SG: So much of it is directly related to actually having a physical space. When we were living in Chicago, we just had three binders: one with fabrics, one with sketches, and one with paperwork.

CP: I had a giant backpack, I walked around like Dora the Explorer. I carried it everywhere with me, and my job was to hold the collection.  You could not remove it from my body. I wouldn’t even leave it in hotel rooms! Like, I’d just be like, “This is our entire office!”

SG: So now having a studio with everything up on the wall, it’s so simple. It’s changed our entire way of working, and – you know, we can just kind of stare at what’s happening for days.

MR: Do you feel like your personal relationship operates differently when you’re designing, versus when you’re between seasons?

CP: We never stop working, which sounds so stupid and fake, but this is the only thing that we really love doing. And I think for both of us, that’s one of the best parts about having a collection and being able to grow: you’re always working, and you’re always able to design stuff.

This time last year, my mom was driving around New York with her SUV, helping me deliver stuff. It’s weird when we talk about not having had money, because I think everyone was like, “Oh, you didn’t have money money,” but we were so broke. I was living with my parents. I remember we had a couple of gala dinners last year and we couldn’t afford hotels, so we’d go in black tie, and then we’d pick up our bags from the coat check, run to NJ transit, get home at 2 in the morning and my mom would pick us up.

MR: But nothing can bring two people closer than that. What sort of advice do you have for other couples who are working together, or want to work together?

SG: Talk a lot.

CP: The most important thing is to talk and to remember that you love the person you’re doing this with. You just always have to remember you care about this person, because a lot of times, emotions can overrule your ability to think about things clearly, and you just have to create the space in your head and a dialogue with each other where you can really figure out your problems.

I don’t think I could have the same relationship with anybody. I didn’t know I’d be in a relationship with anyone! I just never really connected with anybody. I thought I was going to die alone.

MR: Well ultimately you will! We all die alone!

CP: I never get tired of hanging out with Shane, ever. He’s my best friend, and when you’re in a relationship with somebody, they should definitely be your best friend. It shouldn’t be just about whatever physical things you’re doing with each other, because that’s not really sustainable. I’m never embarrassed in front of him, and I’m embarrassed constantly.

MR: Was there one particular moment when you thought, “I love this person so much?”

CP: Yes! I remember the first time I told Shane I loved him.

SG: That was like pretty fast actually.  Like, a couple of weeks.

MR: Were you the first one that said it?

CP: I think we said it at the same time.

SG: No, I told him to say it.

CP: I was like, “I want to tell you something!”

SG: He was just looking at me, and I was like, “Say it!”

It was the end of May and – well, I guess it was June, because we started dating at the end of May, and we were just riding bikes around town, eating ice cream, going to the lake –

CP: It was pretty idyllic.

SG: It was just the right time, because the semester ended, so for me it was summer break, too, you know?  And it was just like…the right opportunity, the right moment to just like hang out. It was summer, and it was beautiful, Chris had just gotten a bike, so we rode bikes around.

MR: What are your favorite things about each other?

CP: I really like Shane’s laugh.  That’s one of my favorite things to do, is to make Shane laugh. And he laughs a lot at my jokes.

SG: That’s all Chris really wants.

CP: I just want someone to laugh at me! Class clown syndrome. And it totally spirals if he stops laughing. I get more desperate and start saying more stupid and more offensive things, and the jokes get worse.

What do you like about me?

SG: He’s really funny, and I think, honestly, there are so many shallow things too. But mostly we just want the same things, you know?  I’ve never dated anybody who has the same kind of weird taste — it’s kind of a weird collage of things that we like. There are definitely places where we separate and have different interests, but the way we live our lives is really aligned. We both like to travel…

CP: I hate traveling! That’s so not true!

SG: That’s not true. You like to go places.

CP: No I don’t! I hate traveling! I keep saying that!

SG: You didn’t have a good time in Japan last year?

CP: No, I have a good time, but I don’t like traveling. I’m happy to be there, but I don’t want to go.

SG: He doesn’t like flying. Maybe that’s a better way of saying it. We do well when we travel together. We want to eat the same kind of food, and we like the same kind of music.

CP: We both really like eating.  Our two favorite things are working and eating, so it kind of parallels.

SG: It’s just really easy. I don’t find the relationship challenging, it just kind of rolls off.

MR: I feel like the common denominator for all successful relationships is ease.  There are third-party variables that always make a relationship more difficult, but there are no games. If there are games, it’s not love.

SG: Yeah, there was never any game.

CP: I get a lot of social anxiety. I talk a ton, which makes it seem like I don’t, but Shane doesn’t, and I think Shane often wants to go out and go to parties and blah blah blah, and I’m like, “I don’t want to go,” and I have a panic attack. That’s one of our biggest ones, where we do kind of fight about it. But then at the same time, I think we can communicate to a degree where we can explain ourselves really reasonably.

MR: Do you do a lot of things alone?

CP: No, we don’t. Recently, I told Shane to go to a movie premiere by himself and he did, and he had a good time.

MR: Was it one of those “Just go!” and then, “I can’t believe you went!” things? Or is that a girl thing?

CP: No no, because that’s the other thing. I wouldn’t tell him to do anything if I didn’t want him to. I owe him honesty, and that has been the foundation of our relationship, because…what does it serve me in the end if I’m lying to him?

SG: At this point, we both kind of know everything about each other anyway.

CP: There’s also no jealousy in our relationship, which is good. I never really felt the need to prove anything or be anyone in a relationship. I just wanted to be with him. I’ve never had a best friend like Shane before, ever, in my entire life.

SG: Neither have I.  I’ve had very close…best female friends for sure, and I have had best male friends, but Chris is by far and away the person I’m the most comfortable with, and the one I can be the most honest with.

MR: It is pretty impressive that you’ve build such a successful label, and that you’re together, and that you’re happy together.

CP: Well, I think that our relationship and the label are so intertwined. The work is a product of our relationship, and I wouldn’t say it’s like either of our aesthetic more than the other, it’s more about the dialogue of a relationship and working together has created the product. It’s our baby!

MR: Wearable fetuses!

We keep ending our interviews asking what the best relationship advice you can give is.  So do you have any tidbits, for the ladies who read Man Repeller and anyone else?

CP: I would say the most important thing is to listen and to communicate, and to be honest with yourself and honest with the other person, because you really have to learn objectivity when dealing with a relationship. You can be emotional about things, but at the same time, you have to learn where that person is coming from when they’re talking about how they feel…or when they’re trying to say anything, really.

SG: That’s exactly what I was going to say too, actually.

It’s Kind of a Funny Story: Christopher Peters and Shane Gabier of Creatures of the Wind

Shane Gabier: I think we should talk about the moment on the train.

Man Repeller: Is that how you met?

Christopher Peters: Well it’s not how we met, but that’s when we kind of decided we were going to be like, I don’t know…that was a weird experience.

SG: Well Chris was – at the time that we first met, I mean, I guess we’d known each other for –

CP: He didn’t even know who I was!

(Laughs)

SG: No, a couple years later I looked at…one of Chris’s old student photo IDs, and he changed so much and I was like, “Wait, you were that guy?” You’d changed a lot in a couple of years.

MR: You guys went to school together?

SG: I was a professor The School of the Art Institute in Chicago and Chris was a student, and I was dating somebody else at the time, and we just kind of broke up, and Chris was maybe moving to London, and at that time, I mean, he’s ten years younger than me, he was just a kid, I wasn’t really thinking about it, you know what I mean?

I was teaching in fashion design, and Chris was a junior, but graduating.  And…did my birthday happen first? Yeah, my birthday happened first.

CP: I think your birthday happened after.  So I’d gone to school to clean out my locker and get all my stuff because I was leaving.  I was moving to London to transfer to school there, and I –

SG: Oh yeah, so it was that night on the train. So I was downtown for some reason…

CP: You were there for Björk!

SG: Oh yeah, I went to see Björk! I was getting on the subway to go home and I got on the car and I looked to my right, and there was this dude that I’d been seeing around the neighborhood who I was into, and he kind of looked up and smiled at me, we said hi a few times, and then I looked to the other side and Chris was down at the other end of the car, and I was like, “hmmm,” and I went left and talked to Chris.  That was a couple days before my birthday party.

CP: And so, I don’t know why I decided to do this because I was moving, but I thought, “Oh, I really think Shane’s cute, and I want to date Shane, I guess!”

MR: Just from that instance on the train?

SG: No, we’d known each other from the department a little bit, and he’d come over to my studio and helped me on a project earlier that spring, just for a couple of hours. And we had a lot of mutual friends.

CP: So I decided I wanted to date Shane, and I found out that his birthday party was coming up, so I called one of his best friends and was like, “Let’s hang out tomorrow night!” and she was like, “Oh, I’m going to Shane’s birthday!” and I was like, “Oh man, I really want to hang with you.”  She said, “Oh, you can totally come to the party!”  And I was like, “Can I?”  And she goes, “Yeah, that would be cool!”  So I got myself invited to his birthday party and I brought a really nice present, which was this still life photograph of Victorian England –

SG: London.

CP: London, yeah, and then one of his friends was there at the dinner, who was this super-cute dude, and he was kind of flirting with me during dinner.  Shane wasn’t really paying attention to me at all, and I was like, “I don’t know if he likes me like that, whatever,” and the guy asks me, “Do you need a ride home?” and I go, “Sure.”  So I got a ride home, we pull up to the front of my house, and he says, “Do you have roommates?” and I remember thinking at that moment, I really have to make a decision right now! This cute other dude, or Shane? So I said, it’s Shane, and I jumped out of the car and said, “I have roommates, everyone’s here, I gotta go bye!”

And that guy called Shane a couple of days later and asked him if it’d be OK if he asked me out, and Shane said no.

SG: He called and asked me if he could get Chris’s number, and I was like, “I don’t think you guys would be a really good match.”  And then we had our first date the next week.

He came over –

CP: Oh!

SG: He’d just bought –

CP: I’d just bought the Jodorowsky –

SG: The Jodorowsky –

CP: Kind of like…

SG: His three movies.

CP: It was El Topo, The Holy Mountain and…something else.  They’re like these super-psychedelic, super-violent movies.  So we watched The Holy Mountain. That was our first date!

SG: He kind of moved in right away.

CP: And we’ve been together now for seven years….we’re always together, which is the other crazy part.

MR: When did you launch the business?

SG: Later that same year we started making stuff, because there’s a studio in my house, so we started just working on things, but at the time we weren’t really working towards anything specifically…

CP: The next February we decided we were going to take a bunch of stuff to LA.

SG: There were a couple of stores out there that we were interested in our stuff. We met a few editors. We met Kim Friday from Women’s Wear Daily at a party and one of our friends was wearing something we’d made, she asked about it, and she took our contact information.

CP: And then a couple of months later, we had the cover of WWD!  But we didn’t even have a collection.

SG: No stores, just a rack of stuff we’d made. And they put it on the cover of WWD. That kind of started the ball rolling.

CP: And then we got a feature in W Magazine.

SG: We both knew we wanted to make clothes and it was really fun for us to work together, too.

CP: I don’t think we could’ve been any more naïve. We were like hillbillies making clothes! Like, “We’re going to sell a little fashion line!”

MR: That naiveté is so important.

CP: With fashion, it’s so difficult to get places. Knowing what it takes to get there, it’s just impossible. If you knew everything that would have to happen, it would be soul-crushing.  It’s better not to know and kind of like, believe in miracles and just –

SG: Just figure it out.

MR: Do you think that being creative together helped your relationship?

SG: Yeah, for sure, and…after a couple of years, it worried me a little bit, like, “Can we sustain our relationship, working together like this?” You hear stories of couples working together in fashion and ending really disastrously. I mean, we talked about it a lot, but at a certain point too, we both realized that we grew up in households where our parents worked together.  My parents had a business together, and so did Chris’s, so maybe that helps.

CP: One of the big things we’ve realized is that we can’t be separated from each other, and not in the way like, “We just love each other so much!” If we break the hive-mind, and this is more in the work realm, if we start reasserting our own separate aesthetics again, that’s when we start to fight.

SG: Like if I go away for a week, which doesn’t really happen that often, and we’re both sketching and working on things, we sort of drift apart a little bit, and when we both look at what we’ve done, it’s not the right thing anymore.

CP: That’s really the only time we fight, is when we’re apart.

SG: The only thing we fight about is work, the collection. We’ll fight about pantone colors or different weights of leather –

CP: Or pockets and buttons!  “I only want two buttons!”  “No, you need more buttons!”

SG: Really important stuff. But we always work it out too, and I think it’s probably really good for the collection and really good for us because it forces you to make more of an informed choice. Everything has to be…worked out, that makes us more efficient.

CP: But it also forced us to be very considerate. We have to talk like we’re constantly in therapy: “I understand why you’re saying this thing to me, but I’m responding to this in this way, because I feel this and this and this and this.”

I think that in the larger scheme of things, it’s helped us to be better at communicating.  We’re actually not that great at communicating a lot of the time, because a lot of people think we’re very confusing and wordy, but I think that, in terms of how we work, we’ve been able to really maintain a healthy working and personal relationship.

MR: Do you ever shut work off for personal time?

CP: The only time we don’t talk about work is when there’s a fight happening, I think the last one was about sequins or something, and that was a big one, where it was like, “We’re just not going to talk about sequin stuff!  We can talk about other stuff, just not sequins, because we’re not going to fight about this over dinner!”

SG: I think nothing really goes into work past a certain point unless we both feel good about it, you know? Usually if we can’t agree on something, we just kind of kill it and move on to something else.

MR: You guys are probably each other’s best editors in that regard, because you still understand each other’s viewpoints, and then you’re probably able to understand that it’s both your child, and that it can be detached.

CP: It’s weirdly our kid.

SG: I like bright color a lot more than Chris does.

CP: Yeah, I’m not into super-bright.

SG: So usually I have to look at those kinds of colors and ease him into them. But, I always want a couple colors, like a couple just really searing, totally off-colors in the collection.

CP: Yes. I mean, that mint green wool skirt from fall, that was definitely your baby, that skirt, both versions, the pink and the green. And then that color, I think we decided…I don’t know how that color went into that skirt.

SG: We first put it in a couple of sweaters.

CP: We first put it into a couple of sweaters, but then how did we decide to do it with the green?

SG: We had the fabric, we had that wool.

CP: Our merchandiser had come in a couple weeks beforehand, and I mean, she’s not a big color person, she killed it in a lot of places. And then we ended up running that skirt on a bunch of color wheels, so that’s how that skirt came into being. But I remember when we were like, “This collection is so understandable!  Nobody’s going to freak out about anything!”

SG: That’s where the idea of naiveté comes in.

CP: That collection felt like, for me…our first real collection. And I don’t mean to diminish any of the other collections beforehand, but – it was the first time where we actually made the collection, we actually plotted it out, and had a team and an office and people to work with, as opposed to, “This is cool!  Let’s make it!”

SG: So much of it is directly related to actually having a physical space. When we were living in Chicago, we just had three binders: one with fabrics, one with sketches, and one with paperwork.

CP: I had a giant backpack, I walked around like Dora the Explorer. I carried it everywhere with me, and my job was to hold the collection.  You could not remove it from my body. I wouldn’t even leave it in hotel rooms! Like, I’d just be like, “This is our entire office!”

SG: So now having a studio with everything up on the wall, it’s so simple. It’s changed our entire way of working, and – you know, we can just kind of stare at what’s happening for days.

MR: Do you feel like your personal relationship operates differently when you’re designing, versus when you’re between seasons?

CP: We never stop working, which sounds so stupid and fake, but this is the only thing that we really love doing. And I think for both of us, that’s one of the best parts about having a collection and being able to grow: you’re always working, and you’re always able to design stuff.

This time last year, my mom was driving around New York with her SUV, helping me deliver stuff. It’s weird when we talk about not having had money, because I think everyone was like, “Oh, you didn’t have money money,” but we were so broke. I was living with my parents. I remember we had a couple of gala dinners last year and we couldn’t afford hotels, so we’d go in black tie, and then we’d pick up our bags from the coat check, run to NJ transit, get home at 2 in the morning and my mom would pick us up.

MR: But nothing can bring two people closer than that. What sort of advice do you have for other couples who are working together, or want to work together?

SG: Talk a lot.

CP: The most important thing is to talk and to remember that you love the person you’re doing this with. You just always have to remember you care about this person, because a lot of times, emotions can overrule your ability to think about things clearly, and you just have to create the space in your head and a dialogue with each other where you can really figure out your problems.

I don’t think I could have the same relationship with anybody. I didn’t know I’d be in a relationship with anyone! I just never really connected with anybody. I thought I was going to die alone.

MR: Well ultimately you will! We all die alone!

CP: I never get tired of hanging out with Shane, ever. He’s my best friend, and when you’re in a relationship with somebody, they should definitely be your best friend. It shouldn’t be just about whatever physical things you’re doing with each other, because that’s not really sustainable. I’m never embarrassed in front of him, and I’m embarrassed constantly.

MR: Was there one particular moment when you thought, “I love this person so much?”

CP: Yes! I remember the first time I told Shane I loved him.

SG: That was like pretty fast actually.  Like, a couple of weeks.

MR: Were you the first one that said it?

CP: I think we said it at the same time.

SG: No, I told him to say it.

CP: I was like, “I want to tell you something!”

SG: He was just looking at me, and I was like, “Say it!”

It was the end of May and – well, I guess it was June, because we started dating at the end of May, and we were just riding bikes around town, eating ice cream, going to the lake –

CP: It was pretty idyllic.

SG: It was just the right time, because the semester ended, so for me it was summer break, too, you know?  And it was just like…the right opportunity, the right moment to just like hang out. It was summer, and it was beautiful, Chris had just gotten a bike, so we rode bikes around.

MR: What are your favorite things about each other?

CP: I really like Shane’s laugh.  That’s one of my favorite things to do, is to make Shane laugh. And he laughs a lot at my jokes.

SG: That’s all Chris really wants.

CP: I just want someone to laugh at me! Class clown syndrome. And it totally spirals if he stops laughing. I get more desperate and start saying more stupid and more offensive things, and the jokes get worse.

What do you like about me?

SG: He’s really funny, and I think, honestly, there are so many shallow things too. But mostly we just want the same things, you know?  I’ve never dated anybody who has the same kind of weird taste — it’s kind of a weird collage of things that we like. There are definitely places where we separate and have different interests, but the way we live our lives is really aligned. We both like to travel…

CP: I hate traveling! That’s so not true!

SG: That’s not true. You like to go places.

CP: No I don’t! I hate traveling! I keep saying that!

SG: You didn’t have a good time in Japan last year?

CP: No, I have a good time, but I don’t like traveling. I’m happy to be there, but I don’t want to go.

SG: He doesn’t like flying. Maybe that’s a better way of saying it. We do well when we travel together. We want to eat the same kind of food, and we like the same kind of music.

CP: We both really like eating.  Our two favorite things are working and eating, so it kind of parallels.

SG: It’s just really easy. I don’t find the relationship challenging, it just kind of rolls off.

MR: I feel like the common denominator for all successful relationships is ease.  There are third-party variables that always make a relationship more difficult, but there are no games. If there are games, it’s not love.

SG: Yeah, there was never any game.

CP: I get a lot of social anxiety. I talk a ton, which makes it seem like I don’t, but Shane doesn’t, and I think Shane often wants to go out and go to parties and blah blah blah, and I’m like, “I don’t want to go,” and I have a panic attack. That’s one of our biggest ones, where we do kind of fight about it. But then at the same time, I think we can communicate to a degree where we can explain ourselves really reasonably.

MR: Do you do a lot of things alone?

CP: No, we don’t. Recently, I told Shane to go to a movie premiere by himself and he did, and he had a good time.

MR: Was it one of those “Just go!” and then, “I can’t believe you went!” things? Or is that a girl thing?

CP: No no, because that’s the other thing. I wouldn’t tell him to do anything if I didn’t want him to. I owe him honesty, and that has been the foundation of our relationship, because…what does it serve me in the end if I’m lying to him?

SG: At this point, we both kind of know everything about each other anyway.

CP: There’s also no jealousy in our relationship, which is good. I never really felt the need to prove anything or be anyone in a relationship. I just wanted to be with him. I’ve never had a best friend like Shane before, ever, in my entire life.

SG: Neither have I.  I’ve had very close…best female friends for sure, and I have had best male friends, but Chris is by far and away the person I’m the most comfortable with, and the one I can be the most honest with.

MR: It is pretty impressive that you’ve build such a successful label, and that you’re together, and that you’re happy together.

CP: Well, I think that our relationship and the label are so intertwined. The work is a product of our relationship, and I wouldn’t say it’s like either of our aesthetic more than the other, it’s more about the dialogue of a relationship and working together has created the product. It’s our baby!

MR: Wearable fetuses!

We keep ending our interviews asking what the best relationship advice you can give is.  So do you have any tidbits, for the ladies who read Man Repeller and anyone else?

CP: I would say the most important thing is to listen and to communicate, and to be honest with yourself and honest with the other person, because you really have to learn objectivity when dealing with a relationship. You can be emotional about things, but at the same time, you have to learn where that person is coming from when they’re talking about how they feel…or when they’re trying to say anything, really.

SG: That’s exactly what I was going to say too, actually.

DIY Denim Patchwork

“What a cool chick,” said the attractive dude to his friends as he casually pointed in my direction. Grumpy, hot, and cramped on this 100 degree subway car, I deliriously smiled and nodded as he continued, “Seriously, Tweety Bird was always so rad.”

Ohhhh. He literally meant chick as in the giant Loony Toon bird adorning my denim vest. Cool.

This vest I sported last summer was my re-initiation into the world of patchwork denim. It was nostalgic and bizarre, hearkening back to the 6 years I spent as a Girl Scout, stuffing my face with thin mints and poking my fingers with needles, all while attempting to sew on patches rightfully earned from attending sock hops.

I hoarded a collection of patches for years — some from my Girl Scout days, some from swap meets, and some pilfered from my brother’s Boy Scout shirt. But when Junya Watanabe’s patchy denim popped up all over our street style roundups, Leandra began to take note that the trend was about more than just one pair of jeans — there was a whole mass of them. And suddenly, my once-purposeless patch collection now had a dream: to live on a pair of jeans.

So gather round, it’s DIY time.

Tools Needed: Jeans, patches, an iron, a wash cloth, a needle & thread or if you are lazy a hot glue gun.

Step 1: Get a pair of jeans, mine were a $5 pair of vintage Levi’s but any of these will work.

Step 2: Acquire some patches. Etsy and Ebay are good starting points.

Step 3: Art direct your jeans. Get creative. Leandra put a #1 patch on the crotch of mine. Thanks!

Step 4: Heat up your iron to 400 degrees and be patient, because if you touch it to feel if it’s hot, it will burn you. Trust me.

Step 5: Iron the shit out of your jeans.

Step 6: Place your wash cloth over the patch and firmly press the iron over it. Iron in a circular motion for 30 seconds – 2 minutes (depends on how hot your iron gets and how sticky the patch is). It’s a great arm work out. You should probably dance while you do it.

Step 7: To make sure the patch sticks, turn the jeans inside out and iron the back side. If you want to kick it old school you can sew around the edges to ensure it stays affixed to your pants. Sometimes patches are assholes and don’t want to stick and if you don’t like needles use a hot glue gun and call it a day.

Et Voila!!

And if anyone wants to explain to me why I earned a patch for “Puppets” that would be greatly appreciated.

So run free, DIY and show us what you make!

Just In: Man Repeller x Superga Volume II

Just in time for spring (or is it summer?), the second set of Supergas by Man Repeller are ready for your purchasing pleasure if you are willing to call the act of purchasing one that is pleasurable. And if last season was a story about taking regal velvet off the head of the pope and stapling it onto the absolutely-quotidian-though-spectacularly-reliable tennis sneakers emblematic of the Superga brand, this season is frankly about the following:

a) Turning a ballerina upside down on her head and giving her slippers a run for their money with a pair of blush pink, satin rubber soled sneakers that come with extra long laces so you can still feel flexible and elegant, etc.

b) Forgoing the backs of some of your sneakers and raising a glass to the mules of yore, which are also the mules of today. They don’t transport drugs but they do harness dreams!

c) Looking at the muted yellow satin on both the mules and full sneakers through the lens of a fashion consumer as opposed to food consumer so that you see them as a flight of fancy as opposed to a flight of condiment. (This is a mustard joke, I realize that might not be clear). Also, seeing the blue satin sneakers as your denim cut offs’ bffs.

d) Trading last season’s metallic tweed for this one’s.

e) Leisurely walking.

Know Your Labels: Trademark

Nothing is more satisfying than coming to understand tangible things as very “you.” Often, this recognition is tethered to an aesthetic — a genre of home decor, an accessory or a piece of clothing. Even more satisfying is when someone else can acknowledge this you-ness. That means your sense of style has become your trademark.

Which is fitting — almost too fitting — considering the brand I’ve recently declared as “me,” which is called, uh, Trademark.

The clothing line is designed by Louisa and Pookie Burch — two sisters from just outside Philadelphia who, despite no formal training in fashion design, have developed a modern, urban version of what American, preppy sportswear should be.

The original concept was born from the idea of achieving affordable and reliable, spectacularly quotidian clothing. “We wanted the first collection to feel like the perfect uniform — the clothes that you wear every day effortlessly,” Louisa said.

They’re inspired by 1960’s and 70’s artists like Donald Judd, Josef Albers and Carl André, American minimalists with austere geometric command. The sisters also cited Nantucket and British interiors as muses for fall.

Shunning the overtly trendy, they “try to think of each collection or next step as instinctual. We always want to make pieces that resonate with people.”

Fabric is a key element for their brand. The designers are constantly considering how it can be used innovatively to create something recognizable and wearable. Their distinctive tonal color palette is strongly examined as well. “We always want the clothes to feel classic, minimal and accessible.”

The brand seems very much about allowing a woman to explore herself, to come to terms with who she is, and to convey that consistently.

“We don’t like to think of the brand belonging to a specific type of woman or style necessarily. We approached Trademark thinking about the idea of a uniform. What are the pieces that make a person’s everyday uniform feel unique and personal? What do people like to put on day after day? We want Trademark to reflect the idea that simple and well-designed pieces can be put together by someone to make their own personal statement.”

Trademark’s first store will be opening this summer in NYC’s SoHo neighborhood at 95 Grand Street, but both the women’s and men’s collection can be found online riiiight here. 

Say We Were Going to Prom Now

If the shop windows in New York City are an indication of anything, it has to be that we are approaching prom season. And when I think prom season I think fruit cake, which is a metaphor for WHY RUIN SOMETHING THAT TASTES SO GREAT ON ITS OWN (fruit/dress shopping) WITH ADDED SUGAR AND GLUTEN (cake/the guidelines that constitute appearing “prom perfect”)?

I like to think I was manipulatively coerced into wearing the metallic crew neck, sleeveless dress that cloaked my body in 2007 when I went to prom. My mom essentially told me that it was this dress or no dress at all, which theoretically should have made for a cool project but I was an asshat.

The dress was tight until the top of my waist line, displaying for all the paltry chest I continue to holster, and then like an explosion that erupts in the wake of a combination of salt and eggs, it expanded outward from the waist until mid-thigh to confirm that on this night, I would let no one see my lying hips.

I got really drunk before we even got to prom, hit my head, and that was it for me.

But things would be different now.

I’d have a much better sense of who I am, and therefore what I want to wear, which is precisely why we bring you What We Would Wear To Prom If We Were Going to Prom Now. It’s a combination of a lot of capital letters coupled with micro-mood boards and illustrations not unlike the ones we imparted on you in March regarding our dream spring spoils.

And if I was 18 in 2014, there is a 0% chance I wouldn’t wear a white suit with some version of a fiesta top underneath it.

Now what you’re seeing is my own drawn depiction of said suit next to one by Habile, who stepped in for me during the last go, too.

I like to think I’d know to ask myself: Self, WWDKD? (What Would Diane Keaton Do?) Upon understanding that she’d wear a suit, I’d look at runway inspiration, chiefly from the archives of Christophe Lemaire and Stella McCartney and then manipulate some variables to make the look my own. I’d tailor the pants to appear ankle length (though not quite as skinny as pictured), and I’d wear loafers so I could be in flats, that were red, so they could match my lips, and a messy top knot (dangling strand of hair notwithstanding) to exemplify a sense of: I care, but I don’t give a shit.

Make sense?

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Amelia:

My senior prom dress walked that dangerous line of will-I-or-will-I-not accidentally flash the dean. It was short. Really, really short, in white fabric with a tiered skirt and an embellished assortment of crystal beads at the dipped U-neck for added measure. If you got it, flaunt it. If you have hair, curl it. And if you have skin, turn it orange. That was my motto!

If I were given a Do-Over I’d go full lady, inspired by the silhouettes of Katie Ermilio, Rosie Assoulin, and Dries Van Noten (Fall 2010). I’d want beautiful fabric and dark color, and high, high heels in a unique but not distracting shape. I’d forgo the clutch and choose something with pockets, and keep my jewelry simple save for a really serious ring. Hairspiration? Connie Britton. The higher the hair, the closer to heaven.

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Charlotte:

I do not regret my choice of prom dress. I do, however, regret proudly bringing a photo in to the hairdresser of Lauren Conrad’s flat-ironed locks complete with a single braid affixed to her head as the model for my evening hairdo. My dress was a bright blue, short sleeve, pleated vintage dress that sat in my closet for four years after being purchased on a trip to New York. It hit just below my knee which was long by California prom standards. Today, I’d go for length, wearing the princess tutu of childhood dreams in conjunction with a polo shirt à la Rochas.

Messy hair is a necessity. As you can see in the sketch it is unsure whether or not it wants to be up or down, maybe a little bit of both? (Definitely not L.C. — that’s for sure). The most important lesson I have learned from formal events is foot comfort is key. Luckily, a long skirt covers your flats, which means you can win the limbo contest. If there is no limbo contest, you’re at a lame party.

 

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So, what are you going to wear?/Did you wear?/Would you wear?/Wish you wore?

Cover photo and Leandra illustration by Habile Buston